»Spheres – textile spaces in visual communication«

A design project in the winter semester 2013/14 at the Faculty of Design of the University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt whose content refers to the surrounding spheres of the individual, to the designed space around the body, the body covering, as a means of visual communication.

»the only important thing about design is how it relates to people« Viktor Papanek. People were the focus of our design projects. The subjective perception of the design of our spheres.

The title "Spheres", borrowed from Sloterdijk, refers in our project to the spaces that surround us physically. We move in spheres, visit them and design them, our working sphere, privacy, retreat sphere... . And we communicate via the spheres, via the spaces with which we surround ourselves.
Our design project in this winter semester 2013/14 was based on a model of thinking that refers to our body coverings. By "body covers" we do not only mean our clothes, but also the objects that surround us, the spaces around us, up to the architecture we enter.
Based on this principle, we discussed the abilities and meanings of these body envelopes, such as their protective function for us, the psychological and the physiological. The different ways of communicating through these covers were elaborated. Their meaning as information carriers of their content. An analogy of the clothing to the designed space resulted from these investigations. The architectural abilities of clothing were discussed.

This led to the first photographic research: the task was to observe the space-creating situations of clothing. How do we occupy space with our clothing, and which spatial dimension of our clothing is perceived by others?

It was interesting to examine our "living units" through the subjective view of our environment from the inside. To look at the spheres in which each of them moves individually. Diagrams were created, which describe the individual spheres.

This led to the question of how these personal spheres can be influenced and shaped. And further: How can atmosphere be created? And in the perception from outside: How does a person communicate via their body wraps, via the spheres they surround themselves with? How can I as a designer control the communication of the spaces around me? A pre-condition of the design in this project was to deal with textile spaces.

For this it was necessary to deal with the technology of how textile spaces can be produced. To learn about the transition of the two-dimensional material fabric into the three-dimensional. My mother, Renée Hepp, who is a pattern maker for clothing by profession, came to visit to teach the basics of pattern making.

The aim of the semester project was to produce designs on a real scale 1:1. In order to get to know the material properties of textiles and the possibilities of creating space with them, an experiment day took place. Textiles with different properties, transparent or stretchable, or solid and heavy, or voluminous foam were offered to make space-creating experiments with them. These took place in the photo studio and were directly documented photographically.

After this guided research phase, the course participants dealt with the main topic, their design project. The models were produced in several workshop days.

The projects dealt with different aspects of our spheres of life and different concepts of veiling.
Clara designed a duvet cover with the title "cosy". Wrapped in the feel-good world of the duvet, the coat plays with the transition between two spheres of life, that of sleeping and that of daytime activities.

Theresa's intention with her cube dress "spatial" was to change the body shapes in order to disguise them as privacy and not to reveal them. Inside the cove

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